that our few remaining friends
give up on trying to save us.
I hope we come up
with a fail-safe plot
to piss off the dumb few that forgave us.
-"No Children" the mountain goats


Such a good song. I LOVE IT. Funny, how I can use the first two words for a title, and they give a certain impression. Then, when seen in context, they change into something completely different.


I'm so exhausted. I was about to turn off the light, but first picked at the scabs on the inner side of my left arm. I was possessed by the need to write here. I felt the compulsion to defy my exhaustion (where it comes from, I don't know), and come to terms with the existence of those scabs: To document their entrance into my world, and their current inhabitance on my arm.

Earlier this week, I had to write an essay. By 10:00, I still hadn't made very much progress. I had no motivation, somehow. I stood barefoot in my kitchen, staring blankly at the screen of this laptop with heavy eye lids, shifting from foot to foot, writing things and then deleting them.
I had lit a candle earlier, and as I typed, I could see it in my peripheral vision. Often during this time, I allowed myself to put my fingers dangerously near the flame. It was tantalizing. I thought of my room-mate and her scars. She said, "Everybody is pretty fucked up, and if you don't know it, you're more fucked up than the rest."

    I took one of the hair pins which had been in my pocket that day, and warmed it in the fire until it turned black. I felt possessed. I held it to the soft, delicate skin on my inner arm. I hurt, and I winced and pulled away. The absence of skin has left odd shaped, rosy scabs. I looked at them in school. I looked at them at home. I don't understand.

This happened.

I think that there are things that go on with all of us, that we can't express even to ourselves. The measure of the complexity of a person is not his or her writing, or even stream of consciousness. There are things that reside in us-that hibernate, or dance wildly about our every action-that we don't know; can't name. I'm trying to describe the thing that makes me feel either furiously ambitious or lazily apathetic... or that causes me to burn my arm.

This is something I can't analyze. I just wrote it. Maybe that's enough. Remembering is work. My time away from home is slowly fading for me. I must practice calling my favorite days to mind: to reconstruct them and keep them in my conscious brain. I know that I have them hidden somewhere, along with other, even more shadowy, unknowable things.

What made today worth while?

What kind of rhetoric is that, "worth while"? It doesn't mean anything. The word and concept of "meaning," I think, is also bullshit. When I question why I think, want, or dream, I find that, at the end of the day, it all comes back to my self interest.

I ask:

how can anyone have a sense of their value to a community when there is no community-- when, instead, people not related by blood are estranged from one another. People, being self-interested, do not pursue relationships with those they do not need. And there is the feeling that we don't need eachother.

It used to be, long ago,
"I'll help you survive if you help me survive."
Now we drive our fucking cars over to the fucking store and spend money, alone, pretty much apathetic about who and what we're actually supporting with the powerful american dollar-- To hell with it, I want my material goods, and by God, I'll have them.

All of us use technology every day that we know nothing about. I use electricity like the pimp uses the whore-- I know what I'm getting, but not how it got here, or what its history is. Why should I care? It only makes life as I know it possible.


Today was beautiful and awful. The sun came out for a (relatively) extended period of time. There was a small rainbow. I stood around outside and breathed air. I also realized that I'm grieviously ignorant.

I remind myself that I'm in highschool, and that I know nothing. I think I know life-- I know nothing. They start teaching you shit in college.

First journal entry! Woot.

• deep breath*

Before I decided to actually write something, I looked around a lot. And Paul Visco, you created some sweet applications. I like the idea of trying to enhance a local community via Internet rather than tear it apart... I don't know if the idea was yours or not, Paul, but I dig it.


I took a walk tonight, among the giant houses near the historical society. The cars on elmwood whizzed softly and incessantly, and I wanted them to go away. Ever since I got home from school-- which was rural and quiet, and different in many other ways, too-- I feel unclear, confused, out of place. As I walked along the sidewalk, I wanted to do all kinds of things that I didn't do because I was too scared: pick up a plastic bag, full of something unknown, which marred the sidewalk (but then I wonder, who else will pick it up? And, further more, does it really matter if it gets picked up or not, or is picking up litter just an oversimplification taught in grade school that it's time for me to eschew?) I also wanted to walk through Hoyt Lake, but knew I'd be terrified, so I had to stay on the street with the cars.

One time, there was a rainbow directly over the twisty bridge in the late spring. It was raining, and I was running, and I wanted to stop dead in the center of the bridge, and stand, pointing up at the rainbow, so the cars would see it too. Maybe people don't even care about rainbows. But it struck me, and I wanted to be prophetic and striking and point up at the sky, but didn't, and I'm not sure why.

Sometimes a great satisfaction, which comes after the act, justifies doing something abhorrent. But never doing anything in the first place is an entirely different matter. I'm telling you, though, its much easier to obey your impulses in the country. There's a smaller chance of rape, and fewer people driving too fast to notice a rainbow.

Speaking of cars, the ones outside the giant houses around the historical society were pretty sleek. I was thinking about having a lot of money. "Jim Ball" was written on one of the licence plates. I don't think I would want my name on someone else's plate. Jim Ball must have a lot of money, though, to have his name for everyone to see like that. But really, who cares about Jim Ball? I don't think he needs to put his name on the plate of every car he sells.

I'm going to New York City for New Years. It's going to be wild. I am so excited. Finally I won't feel like everyone else is having a party on New Years and I'm left out. Yes!

Every where you go in New York City on New Years is a party. I hope its like the New Years scene in Forrest Gump: lots of wine, women, and bright lights.